


Some love was made for the lights

by heavenisalibrary



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 06:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3801010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times the Doctor hated being called 'sweetie', one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some love was made for the lights

I.

 

The Doctor’s doing something incredibly complicated involving mathematical equations Clara’s never even heard of, and she watches it with rapt interest as it flashes across the computer screen lightning quick. Clara’s very clever, and is quite good with numbers, if she’s honest, but this is very hard to follow. She wonders if this planet simply uses a different system, or if it’s the Doctor’s own way of solving problems that seems so alien to her. She gets bits and pieces, and after a few minutes picks up the pattern well enough to point out an error, although she probably wouldn’t have been able to correct it. He mutters his thanks and grins at her sideways as he works, and she smiles.

He saves the planet with those math problems, and when he’s finished, he lifted his hands from the keyboard, straightens his bowtie, puts on that insufferably smug grin, and turns around with a clap to face the room full of dignitaries who had summoned him.

“Well,” says the head of the group, an older woman with short, grey hair and the sort of smile Clara thinks would suit a grandmother, “that was rather impressive. I doubted your abilities when I saw how young you are, but can’t argue with the results.”

He salutes her. “Happy to help.”

She reaches out to shake Clara’s hand, and then the Doctor’s. “Thank you, sweetie.”

It’s so fast Clara would’ve missed it if she hadn’t been looking at the Doctor. He goes a bit pale, his smile slipping off of his face, and suddenly he’s looking straight through the woman before him instead of at her. His hand stops halfway to his bow tie, and just for that split second, he’s frozen. But he sets his jaw and shakes his head and cracks an awful joke about brussel sprouts and then he’s spinning back into the TARDIS, and she almost forgets all about it.

II.

It’s not that the Doctor is rude, per se, but he’s just not got a whole lot of tact in that big head of his, and sometimes Clara feels a bit like his mother, always ready to step in front of him and apologize for something insensitive he’s said without realizing it. With children, though, he’s always on his best behavior, and Clara finds it more than a little endearing. She knew he’d had a granddaughter, so he must’ve had at least one child at some point, but once when she asks how many kids he’d had he’d scratched his cheek in that anxious way he has a habit of and told her that it wasn’t as simple a question as it seemed.

She’d pressed him a bit, but his answer had been so evasive that she’d been forced to ask if he even knew, which was a bit insensitive, but he seemed so baffled by the question. It was only once she said it that she realized maybe he didn’t — there was a certain hopefulness to his expression before he’d changed the subject completely, and Clara was left wondering about his wife, and how that sort of thing would work if they were so out of order.

They’d meant to just grab a bite to eat on a planet full of smallish, orange people — not Oompa Loompas, the Doctor had chided her — and end up spending the better part of the afternoon on a playground with a bunch of tiny, orange children. The Doctor’s wonderful with them, probably because he’s mostly a child himself, and when they go to leave at the end of the day one of the mothers comes up to him, squeezes his hand, and thanks him for playing with the kids.

“You’re a real sweetie,” she says.

The Doctor looks a bit ill, suddenly, scrubbing a hand over his face and tugging at his hair and looking everywhere but at the mother in front of him, and he stammers slightly as he searches for a response. Clara reaches up to touch his arm, but he shakes her off, straightens his bow tie and says, “no, no. It was my pleasure.”

When they head back to the TARDIS, he stays a few steps ahead of her so she can’t see his face.

III.

They’re having a good day — a great day — with lots of laughing and running but very little actual danger. The Doctor’s spinning around the console, full of energy and quick smiles, and she knows his moods like the back of her hand by now; sometimes, when he’s at his most happy, seemingly, she knows he’s at his most sad, but this seems genuine. They banter back and forth as he punches in coordinates, and he nearly bowls Clara over on his way around, and they giggle as they both slip on the smooth TARDIS floor and try to stay standing before he carries on pulling levers and flicking switches.

He’s so busy nattering on about someone they’d met earlier that day that he loses track of his hands — though he’d never admit it — and presses the button for the answerphone. Instantly the console room is filled with River’s voice, unmistakable, on the tail end of a laugh. The Doctor freezes instantly, as does Clara, and beneath River’s laughter they can hear the Doctor’s own voice in the background.

“Woops, here you are after all — ignore the other messages — sorry, sweetie —”

The sound his hand makes as he slams it against the erase button makes Clara jump. She steps around the console to find him, hunched over the interface, shoulders slumped, head hanging, hand still on the erase button.

“Are you sure you wanted to…” she trails off when he doesn’t move, squeezing his eyes shut, and when he inhales his shoulders shake. She steps closer, reaching out a hesitant hand to him, but the moment she touches him he shakes her off and bolts upright, wiping a hand angrily at his damp eyes and grinning. He looks a little manic in that moment, and Clara sort of wants to hug him and sort of wants to leave him alone, but he clears his throat and then he’s off spinning around the console again.

He starts talking and laughing at his own rapid-fire jokes, and this time, Clara thinks it’s one of those times he’s acting happy when he’s at his most sad.

IV.

They’re joking around as they run, and when he stops up short he spins around to face her and she collides into him, and he catches her awkwardly around the shoulders, but they’re closer than is comfortable. It comes out without a thought, just a joke, just something that came to mind, just a bit of a laugh and sarcasm and —

“Hello, sweetie.”

She’s not even thinking when she does it. She wishes she could take it back the moment it leaves her mouth, and claps a hand over it as though she could, but the expression on his face is so stricken and verging on angry that she has to immediately remove her hands to apologize.

“Doctor,” she says, “I’m so sorry, so sorry — I didn’t mean to, it just seemed… funny, you know, and I just — I’m so sorry, I know how you hate —”

He lets her shoulders go and steps away from her, and she watches as he sets his jaw and looks down to pull at his sleeves.

“Don’t say that,” he says, shaking his head. He still won’t look at her, and Clara wants to cry at the expression she can only half see on his face. “Please. Never say that again.”

“I won’t,” she says,”I know it’s —”

“It’s nothing,” the Doctor says, waving his hand and pasting on a smile. She wonders if he thinks she can’t rightly see him in the dark, because his eyes are red and he’s got those lines around his mouth when he’s trying to swallow things he shouldn’t say or when he’s just barely resisting the urge to cry, and she lets out an involuntary noise of sympathy.

Usually, she’s more of a ‘buck up, soldier’ type, but it’s just been so long — it’s been nearly a year for her, much longer for him since they saw River. They saw her once after Trenzalore, and she’d been a one-eighty from the older, more weathered River Clara had met through the psychic link. The River they’d run into had been so young and wild and a little bit terrifying but totally wonderful and exactly the sort of woman she could see wrapping the Doctor around her finger. Watching them together was sort of like watching a couple in a ballroom dancing competition after seeing one of them practice alone for so long — together they were a force of nature, in perfect sync, but when they’d dropped River off the next morning, the Doctor’s high spirits immediately dipped, and he’d told Clara that that was likely the last time he’d see her.

And now it’d been nearly a year for her, and probably hundreds for him. His wife was dead, and his grief was small and it was quiet but it spanned centuries, it seemed. She didn’t think this was the sort of thing to be helped by tough love.

“It’s not nothing,” Clara says, smiling at him sadly.

He shakes himself. “We’d best get back to running, hm?”

“Alright,” Clara says, “whatever you need.”

He offers her his hand and the second she takes it, they’re off.

 

V.

  
They're running for their lives down some seemingly endless corridor with a small militia on their heels, hell bent on killing them for — well, Clara doesn't really remember, but she's sure it's the Doctor's fault, because these things usually are. She's actually worried that they might not make it out of the building before they're caught when a door opens just as the turn a corner, and in a flurry of motion someone reaches out to grab the Doctor's arm, pulling him into the room as he yelps and grabs Clara, tugging her with him. The Doctor stops so abruptly when the door closes that Clara stumbles into him, and he doesn't even move to right her.

"What on —" she stops herself the moment she steps around the Doctor and sees River standing there, hands on her hips.

"Hello, Clara," River says, "keeping himself in line?"

"Yes ma'am," Clara says. She's glad to see River — she's always glad to see River, especially when River is saving their lives — but she's a bit worried as she glances at the Doctor, who's gone pale and hasn't yet managed to utter a word. "It's a full time job."

"Oi," the Doctor says, finally, his voice slightly thick, "I resent that. I'm the  _Doctor_. I don't need babysitting."

"You do, a bit," says Clara.

River rolls her eyes. "Why do you think I insist you never travel alone?"

"Rude, River Song," he says, stepping toward her and giving himself a strange sort of shake, as though waking himself up from a dream. "I don't need you looking after me, you know."

"Oh, you do," River says, stepping toward him, and reaching up to straighten his bow tie. Clara glances around the room, wondering if there's anywhere she can go to avoid watching what feels like a very private moment. But then, if River's alive, she doesn't  _know_ how long the Doctor's gone without seeing her. Clara can see his hand trembling slightly as he reaches out to tap River's nose, and she knows River must see it too, but then she supposes that's part of all the  _spoilers_  and secret keeping — sometimes they just can't ask. _  
_

"Yeah, I do," the Doctor agrees, after a beat. She can hear the grin in his voice, and knows it to be there from the way River rolls her eyes at him and tamps down on a grin of her own. "But what sort of time do you call this, anyway? We very nearly got captured."

"Traffic was hell," River says, "plus, I do love to build suspense."

"Stupidly dangerous," he says, leaning nearer to her.

"Says the man who's died eleven times and counting," she says, and before he can respond, she steps into him and kisses him. Clara again wishes she could leave them alone — she knows how long the Doctor has been without River, at least generally, and she knows that he misses her so much he can hardly speak of it, but there's nowhere to go. At least River doesn't know quite what's going on, and so she pulls away quickly, looking up at him like he's her whole world.

"Hello, dear," he says, his voice tremulous. Clara sees concern flit across River's face, but like everything else, River gets it under control a split second later — Clara wonders how the universe ever managed to kill River Song, since she's so terribly good at keeping everything under her thumb.

"Hello, sweetie," she says.

The Doctor doesn't stop smiling for a month.


End file.
